IN APRIL

I woke up this morning and there was the wind.  Sometime during the night it had swept through everything, making things right again.  The house was quiet - Orest in the garage fixing a bike, Eloise and Julian in their pajamas making water balloons on the front lawn.  And I noticed there were things I have looked at but never actually seen.  The bushes outside our front door, the house across the street, the palm of my hand.

Last week I felt discouraged that I would never again be able to make a good photograph.  It seemed unlikely that there was an original idea left in the world - every story already written and no new songs left to be sung.

And then it was after dinner and I was sorting laundry, Ray LaMontagne playing from a boombox on the dresser and my favorite song came on.  Gabriel was crawling through the piles of clean clothes on the bed and I picked him up and we slow danced together around the room.  He turned his cheek against my collarbone, I caught a glimpse in the mirror of his little body tucked against mine.  And as we swayed back and forth between the closet and the bed I felt the singularity of that moment so acutely.  It filled me up, it rushed through me like the wind and touched a thousand different places inside.

And I knew: There will always be a moment that belongs entirely to you.  There will always be a new idea.  There will always be another picture.

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